Ivanti Endpoint Security: Three Legs to Stand On

The metaphor of a three-legged stool to explain a policy, plan, or strategy has always worked for me. Mostly because two legs of something don’t provide any stability at all—and it’s a lot easier to remember three discussion points of whatever vs. four.

Take the three legs of an argument—ethos, pathos, and logos. It needs all three appeals to stand.

Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and is a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader. Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. And logos is an appeal to logic—a way of persuading an audience by reason.

Analyst Chris Sherman of Forrester Research uses a three-legged stool approach of sorts in to discuss the “The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up” in his report The Forrester Wave: Endpoint Security Suites, Q4 2016. You can download it below.

Three core buyer needs

Sherman says when it comes to endpoint security, point products generally meet one need while solution suites “meet two or all three, with varying levels of automatic policy enforcement between each.”

The three legs or the three core buyer needs are:

Attack prevention—the need to prevent malware and exploits from executing

The ethos, pathos, and logos for choosing Ivanti

Ivanti (referred to in the report under our former name Landesk) is among the top 15 endpoint security vendors discussed, which speaks to our character and credibility. We deliver an integrated suite that demonstrably meets the buyer needs of attack prevention, detection, and remediation.

In addition, customers have emotional and logical ties to our solutions and attentive customer support.

Like all financial institutions, the Chevron Federal Credit Union’s No. 1 priority is protecting its customers’ deposits. “Staying one step ahead of attacks is an ongoing job for us,” says Sachin Kundra, Vice President, Information Technology. “A key part of our strategy is making sure our software has the latest patches.”

The credit union’s previous solution was inadequate. “We had to schedule all patch updates for a specific time once a week,” says Kundra. “But if a PC was shut down or a laptop was off the network during the scheduled update, they didn’t get patched. We’d either have to do the patch by hand or wait until the following week’s update. The tool was also very Microsoft-centric. It did support other vendor hardware, but the list was very finite. So we didn’t have the flexibility we needed in that respect.”

70-percent decrease in vulnerability

Ivanti technology has helped the credit union’s IT staff achieve a 70-percent decrease in vulnerability. The staff shifted from a once-a-week patching schedule to a once-a-day “on demand” schedule.

“If a machine needs a patch,” says Kundra, “Landesk (now Ivanti) will recognize the fact and immediately find and install the latest update. And it supports a vastly more extensive list of vendors than our old tool. We have seen a 60- to 70-percent reduction in vulnerability since implementing Landesk. In addition, we are highly regulated by the National Credit Union Administration [NCUA]. Now when the NCUA performs an audit, we can print out a report that shows the date and time each patch was installed and a detailed view of our vulnerability.”